March 13, 2013
Hello Everyone!!
Today is the day that we went to the second school for my Cultural Diversity Practicum. The second school is the Upper Income City School. We started the day with breakfast near our beautiful hotel and then hopped in the van to head to the school.
This school had more resources, slightly nicer buildings, and a lunchroom. The other two schools we visited did not have a full lunchroom, just a snack area during break time. This school seemed more organized than the lower income but the teachers didn't seem to care as much because the higher grades English teacher didn't teach her 5th grade lesson because the regular classroom teacher didn't show up and she told us that the kids are hard to work with. It was strange for me that she said that because I didn't think a teacher could do that. The children just sat outside and busied themselves. It seemed counterproductive to why they were at school. For more notes on this school, look at my Cultural Diversity Setting Post.
After the school session, we headed in the van to El Triunfo, a small and beautiful mining town. They have a really nice pizza place up in the hill called Caffe El Triunfo. The pizza was probably the best pizza of my entire life. Plus the place was beautiful. We took a tour around town after eating our pizza and we walked by the famous smoke tower. This tower was designed to send smoke from the ovens upwards into the air instead of outwards, polluting the town. The person who designed this tower is the same person who designed the Eiffel Tower, which is pretty awesome. I climbed into the tower and looked upwards into the sky. It was kind of intimidating but super amazing at the same time. As we walked around the town, we also stopped by the English cemetery. This cemetery, at the time is was built, was separately from the Chinese cemetery because the English/British believed that they were better than the Chinese and built their cemetery on higher ground than the Chinese cemetery. Each of the graves at the British/English cemetery were built above ground, with around 30 bodies stacked in each tomb. Visiting El Triunfo was such a interesting town to visit and I would really like to go back one day and visit the Chinese cemetery and further explore the town. They have a museum and city hall that I would really like to see as well.
When we came back from El Triunfo, we went to Garrett's Host Family's House for dinner. Garrett is a Valley City State University Exchange Student currently studying in Baja California Sur, Mexico. His host family cooked us a feast of Mexican food and we ate on a patio on the roof of their house. It was really beautiful. There was a student there from the local college, UABCS, who is interested in being an exchange student at Valley City State University. She was really nice and I invited her to come stay with me in Fargo for a couple days while she attends Valley City State University. I hope she takes me up on the offer because I would like to get to know her better and see how her exchange student experience is going.
After we finished up dinner, we headed back to the hotel and I had a wonderful sleep after a long and wonderful day.
Thank you,
Olivia Brownson
Schedule Overview
- Breakfast
- School (Upper Income City School)
- See notes in Cultural Diversity Setting Post
- Tour of El Triunfo
- Beautiful mining town
- Tower in the town designed by the same guy who designed the Eiffle Tower
- Dinner at Garrett's Host Family's House
- Garrett is a Valley City State University Exchange Student living in Mexico currently
- Met a wonderful firl interested in being an exchange student from Mexico (UABSC) to Valley City State University
- Sleep
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